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Africana Studies

The Black House

During the spring of 1992, Black students at CSUN, led by the Black Student Union, protested the various overt and covert forms of racism that existed on campus. The exploitation of Black athletes, a biased, Eurocentric curriculum, inordinately low graduation rates for Black students, and the absence of a center for Black student development prompted the Black Student Union leadership to issue a number of demands to the administration. As a result of those demands, a facility of approximately 3,000 square feet was granted jointly to the BSU and the Pan African Studies Department. Assuming the name of the facility that had previously existed on campus, but which was subsequently taken back, that new facility became known as the Black House. The new Black House has become the headquarters for the BSU and is the cultural home and meeting place for virtually every other Black student organization on campus.

The Black House continues to play an active role in the provision of educational programs that advance the learning skills of CSUN students through tutorial programs, a computer lab, and guest lectures. Cultural programs are developed at the Black House to expose the campus and the greater Los Angeles community to rich, creative, and artistic traditions of the African American, African and Caribbean peoples. Through its multiple programs and its involvement of students, faculty, staff, administrators and community leaders, the Black House has truly become a center for Black empowerment.